Divorce Me A Little?

Please read Rachel Zucker's paean to separateness in marriage, from the Times yesterday. Here is a bit of it:

In her book “Misconceptions,” Naomi Wolf writes about the phenomenon whereby heterosexual couples become less egalitarian after having children. The anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of “Mother Nurture,” theorizes that the huge cultural differences between men and women can be traced to small things, like the fact that mothers respond slightly faster to crying infants than fathers do, and that over time these seemingly minor differences result in significant discrepancies between maternal and paternal investment of daily time and energy.

Maybe what I mean by “acting divorced” is that I want us to renew our vows not of marriage but of egalitarianism. My husband is a feminist, but somehow I’ve taken charge of the lioness’s share of our domestic responsibilities even though he doesn’t make more money or work longer hours than I do. And the more I do, the more helpless and unhelpful he becomes. Our parenting sometimes resembles a game of chicken, and I almost always lose.

When my husband and I met, he was running a short-term business enterprise. For a week he planned the menus, bought the groceries and cooked two meals a day for a troupe of 80 actors performing in the Yale commencement musical. I reminded him of this (somewhat angrily) the other night when he was flummoxed by the task of preparing pasta, jarred sauce and broccoli (that I’d already cooked and put in the refrigerator).

“Maybe I just need to make my own things,” he said, following me around as I set the table for a dinner I would not be eating.

“Great!” I said, knowing he’d never take the initiative.

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